While not the most elegant of solutions, it does present an alternative way to look at the Curation Process. Maybe it would be easier to just not allow people to upvote their own items and instead allow 5 Article Bumps per day per article for each user. That way the self-voting doesn't dilute the product into worthlessness while allowing newer Steemians the possibility of having their posts seen more often than otherwise possible.
I have 245 followers currently and what I find most disconcerting is that I get only the rarest of upvotes. Now that my self-upvotes (which provide nearly all of my rewards for most of my articles) have become less significant, I have less desire to go through the trouble of writing on here. That would be a shame if Steemit began to lose users because of this issue. If my articles could be bumped up without having to be promoted using my earnings (which I've done unsuccessfully), I might have the possibility of having other users participate in them and pssibly have a whale or 2 see them and upvote.
So, as for me, even an inelegant solution is worth looking at as it's something that's being proposed to make the Community better.
There's an important utility to self-upvotes. It allows advertisers to power up and promote their products etc, which could be an important revenue stream for Steem in the future. But yes, it could be limited.
Monetizing articles is definitely a way to make money, but does it kind of go against the normal thought process for most Steemians?
So in summary: self upvotes bump as if they increased the reward, but don't actually increase the reward. They can still come out of the users voting power. Interesting idea.
It's a good one! I missed that detail.
People can just use a second account to up vote their own stuff. There are always workarounds to BARRIERS such as this. I prefer to just not follow people that up vote their own comments.
EDIT: I was fine for the up vote for visibility when it was a few cents... yet people doing it $8, $10 for their comment when there is nothing remotely close to that is clearly not about visibility.